{"id":343620,"date":"2026-07-17T17:01:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/343620\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T17:01:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:01:45","slug":"new-everglades-wildfire-in-broward-burns-thousands-of-acres-causes-smoky-conditions-for-metro-areas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/343620\/","title":{"rendered":"New Everglades wildfire in Broward burns thousands of acres, causes smoky conditions for metro areas"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new Everglades wildfire in west Broward County<\/a> has burned thousands of acres and brought smoky conditions to nearby metro areas, according to state officials and CBS Miami meteorologists.<\/p>\n

According to the Florida Forest Service’s Watch Duty map<\/a>, the Mile Marker 40 fire has burned 4,400 acres just west of US-27 and north of I-75.<\/p>\n

As of Friday morning, it is 20% contained.<\/p>\n

The Watch Duty map first reported the fire Thursday afternoon at approximately 1:35 p.m. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The fire has caused smoky conditions for residents and visitors alike\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fire has caused smoky conditions for some Broward residents, with people living in the area smelling smoke. It has also disrupted travel plans for some visitors.<\/p>\n

Michelle Reid, who is visiting from Scotland, said she has never been involved in a situation like this. She is heading south toward the Florida Keys, away from the flames.<\/p>\n

“I’m 100 percent happy that I am heading in the other direction,” Reid said.<\/p>\n

Martha Flowers, who traveled from Pennsylvania to escape wildfire smoke from Canada, expressed relief at moving away from the affected area.<\/p>\n

“In Pennsylvania, where I’m from, they’re dealing with the Canadian smoke, so I’m going to go from one area to the next,” Flowers said.<\/p>\n

This fire adds to a series of blazes in the Everglades over the past six weeks. Steve Davis, chief science officer for the Everglades Foundation, attributed the fire risk to drought-level rainfall shortages.<\/p>\n

“We’ve now entered into this extended dry period once again, and it’s really exacerbating the drought and makes the system more vulnerable to fire,” Davis said.<\/p>\n

Davis noted that while fires are common in this region, they would be less severe with adequate rainfall.<\/p>\n

“June is generally a pretty good rainfall month, but we had about half or less of the typical average for that month,” Davis said. “What we’re looking at in July is a below-average rainfall month.”<\/p>\n

No homes or structures have been threatened at the moment.<\/p>\n

The NEXT Weather team <\/a>is forecasting southwesterly wind that could push the smoke into northern portions of Broward and southern Palm Beach County in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Forest Service is investigating the cause of the fire. The Everglades Foundation said that when the ground is this dry, fires can burn into the soil, potentially requiring decades, or even a century, for the land to recover.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new Everglades wildfire in west Broward County has burned thousands of acres and brought smoky conditions to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[506,855,1779,123,125,124,557,807,69605],"class_list":["post-343620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-broward-county","tag-fire","tag-firefighters","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-palm-beach-county","tag-south-florida","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}